Every reseller has a tracking number for a shipment. Far fewer know what they'd actually get back if that shipment vanished in transit. Tracking and insurance are two different things — one proves what happened, the other pays you for it — and the gap between them shows up at the worst possible moment: after a $200 item is already gone and a buyer is asking where it is.
What's already included, for free, before you buy anything
USPS bundles a baseline amount of insurance into two of the services resellers use constantly, at no extra cost and with no box to check:
- Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express both include $100 of
- coverage against loss or damage, automatically, on every domestic
- shipment with a tracking barcode.
- Ground Advantage — the service that replaced First-Class Package,
- Retail Ground, and Parcel Select Ground back in July 2023 — carries the
- same $100 included, at no added cost, whether you're buying the
- label at retail or through a commercial platform.
- Media Mail includes none of this. As covered in [the Media Mail
- post](/blog/usps-media-mail-vinyl-records-2026), USPS's cheapest rate for
- records, books, and other media carries zero automatic coverage — the
- discount rate and the free insurance don't come bundled together.
That last point catches record sellers specifically, because Media Mail is the default choice for shipping vinyl and the $100 baseline everyone assumes is "just how USPS works" simply isn't there on that service.
When $100 isn't enough
A lot of what moves through eBay, Shopify, and Discogs clears $100 without much thought — a pair of sneakers, a graded card, a first pressing. USPS lets you buy additional coverage up to $5,000 per package on top of the included amount, priced on a published tier schedule (USPS Notice 123) rather than a flat percentage:
- Declared value up to $50: $2.70
- Declared value up to $300: $4.45
- Declared value up to $500: $7.45
- Above $600: $8.95, plus $1.50 for every additional $100 (or
- fraction of it)
Buying up to a given declared value is what you're paying for — not the amount above the free $100 — so a $500-value package costs $7.45 to fully insure, not $7.45 on top of some smaller number for the first $100. On a sale that size, insurance is a rounding error next to the risk of eating the loss yourself.
The eBay-specific shortcut: ShipCover
If you're buying your shipping label through eBay itself rather than at usps.com, there's a second option sitting right in the label flow: ShipCover, eBay's own third-party shipping insurance, available at checkout on USPS, UPS, and FedEx labels purchased through eBay. It covers up to $15,000 per package — well past USPS's own $5,000 ceiling — and is priced per $100 of coverage rather than USPS's tiered schedule, working out to roughly $1.45–$2 per $100 depending on carrier and declared value (USPS labels start around a $1.70 minimum). It's a separate, independent policy from USPS's own insurance, not an extension of it, so the two aren't stackable coverage on the same package — you're choosing one or the other for anything above the free $100.
This option doesn't exist for Discogs. Discogs doesn't sell shipping labels at all — you're buying postage directly from USPS or a separate platform like Pirate Ship, which means the ShipCover checkbox simply isn't there. A Discogs seller shipping a $500 pressing is buying USPS's own additional coverage directly, or going without.
What insurance won't cover, no matter how much you buy
A short, specific exclusion list applies regardless of declared value: cash, currency, and negotiable documents are excluded outright, and so are hazardous materials, perishables, and live animals — none of that is relevant to most resale categories. The one exclusion that does matter to some sellers: jewelry, precious metals, and loose coins are capped at $500 in coverage, no matter how much declared value you buy on top of that. A $2,000 gold chain insured for $2,000 is still only covered for $500 if it's lost. Vinyl records, trading cards, sneakers, and general collectibles aren't subject to that cap — they're insurable up to the full $5,000 (or $15,000 through ShipCover) like anything else.
Filing a claim: the window that catches people
This is the part sellers get wrong most often, because the instinct after a package goes missing is to file immediately — and for a fully lost package, USPS won't let you yet. For an article that never arrived at all, you have to wait until 15 days have passed since the mailing date before a claim can be filed (7 days for Priority Mail Express), and the window then closes at 60 days from mailing. File too early and it gets rejected; wait past 60 days and you're out of luck entirely. Damage or missing-contents claims work differently — you can file as soon as you find the damage — but they share the same 60-day outer deadline.
A claim needs four things: the tracking number, proof of insurance (the mailing receipt or label), proof of value (an invoice, an order confirmation, a sale record — anything showing what the item actually sold for), and, for damage, photos of the item and the packaging before you throw anything away. Once a claim is approved, USPS typically pays out within 7–10 business days.
This is not the same process as an eBay or Discogs dispute
Worth being explicit about, because the two get conflated constantly: an insurance claim is you recovering money from USPS for a lost or damaged shipment. It has nothing to do with whether you owe the buyer a refund. eBay's Money Back Guarantee process decides whether the buyer gets their money back, on eBay's own timeline and criteria — and buying extra insurance doesn't change what that process requires from you. A $780 order still needs signature confirmation to qualify for eBay's seller protection at the $750 threshold, insured for $5,000 or not. Insurance protects your recovery of the shipping cost and declared value from the carrier; it doesn't substitute for the tracking and signature requirements eBay's own protection runs on.
A worked example
Say you sell a record for $480 and ship it Priority Mail, so the $100 included coverage falls well short. You buy additional coverage up to $500 for $7.45 at the counter, and the package never arrives.
- Day 12: buyer messages asking where it is. Tracking shows no movement
- since day 3. Too early to file — the 15-day window hasn't opened.
- Day 16: you file the claim with the tracking number, the label receipt,
- and the Discogs or eBay sale record as proof of value.
- USPS approves the claim about a week later and pays out within 7–10
- business days: $500, against a $7.45 insurance cost and the $480
- sale you'd have otherwise eaten in full.
Compare that to the same $480 record shipped Media Mail with no insurance purchased: nothing to file, nothing to recover, and the entire $480 plus the original postage is gone.
What to actually do
- **Know that Ground Advantage carries the same free $100 as Priority
- Mail.** A lot of sellers only associate the free coverage with Priority
- Mail and don't realize their cheaper everyday service already includes
- it too.
- Insure anything shipping Media Mail separately, on purpose. It's the
- one common reseller service with zero coverage bundled in, and it's the
- default choice for exactly the category — vinyl — most likely to clear
- real money.
- **Buy the coverage that matches the sale price, not a round number that
- feels safe.** The tier schedule prices what you're insuring up to, so
- match it to the actual declared value.
- **Don't wait to notice damage, but don't file a lost-package claim
- early.** Damage claims can go in right away; "never arrived" claims are
- rejected before day 15 (day 7 for Priority Express) no matter how
- obviously gone the package is.
- Remember insurance and buyer protection are two separate systems.
- Recovering money from USPS doesn't satisfy eBay's own signature or
- tracking requirements, and it doesn't touch what you may still owe the
- buyer.
PalmFlow doesn't sell postage, generate shipping labels, or file insurance claims — none of that is a carrier integration PalmFlow has, and "labels" inside PalmFlow means SKU and barcode labels for your own inventory, not shipping labels. What it does track is what an item actually cost you against what it sold for, so a lost package's real hit — the sale, minus whatever a claim recovers — shows up as an accurate number instead of disappearing into a vague sense that shipping "went wrong sometimes." Free plan, 50 items, no card.
Disclaimer: this is general information, not legal or financial advice. USPS insurance rates, coverage limits, exclusions, and claim procedures are set by USPS and can change; eBay's ShipCover pricing and coverage are set by eBay and its insurance partner. Confirm current numbers at usps.com and in eBay's own Seller Center before relying on the figures above for a shipping decision.